Weird Science Chapter Seven
WEIRD SCIENCE, CHAPTER 7 We looked at each other, our eyes full of shock and desperation. We needed a password, and now. What could it be? "Um… Stacy," Trinity guessed. I heard Mr. Nepolotano curse under his breath. "Yes," he hissed at us, and the doors swung open. I just stared at Trinity. "Sta-cy?" I asked. "It's the name of his sister, I asked him about it," Trinity said, smiling. The room had a cold, gray and black tiled floor, it was shaped like a dome, and it was made of glass. Beyond the glass was the ocean. Occasionally, a shark or fish swam by. There were desks with all kinds of fancy multi colored liquids in beakers. We swam up to the floor and pulled ourselves out of the water. My clothes stuck to me, and my hair gripped onto the back of my neck. Since it was wet, the color had turned to a deep brown and all hints of blonde had gone away. "Welcome, Dragon Sisters, to my lair," a voice said. We jumped and saw Mr. Nepolotano meditating on a black mat by the back of the room, wearing a new lab coat, one that had not been drenched by the water. He got up and looked us in the eyes. "Had a nice swim?" "No!" Trinity exclaimed, speaking the truth. "Are you gonna fight us, or what?" Nicole asked. He laughed. "So confident that you'll win… it's sad, really," he said. "Well, if you insist… but it's not fair. I'm outnumbered. The three of you have more strength than I." "So?" I asked. He sighed. "I guess," Mr. Nepolotano said, smiling. And the battle began. Well, for the other Dragon Sisters, it was a battle. I only saw the first few seconds. No sooner had the battle started than Mr. Nepolotano had me pinned down. Before Trinity and Nicole could kick him off, he opened my mouth by force and poured a lot of green colored liquid down my throat out of a beaker. The liquid tasted like… death. ---- I can't describe what death tastes like. All I can tell you is that it had no flavor, but taste was replaced with thought. In my mind I saw people dying, children pleading, people crying for their lovers. I knew that it was death I was seeing, nothing but pure death. I then saw myself sobbing over two graves, right next to each other. One read, 'RIP, PO PING. THE DRAGON WARRIOR. LOVED BY MANY, MISSED BY EVEN MORE'. The other read, 'RIP, ANDREW MATHLIN- DREAMED OF LOVE, YET NEVER LIVED TO SEE IT.' I was horrified. I had loved both, but never chose one… And then my world swirled into a pool of darkness, and I was left with nothing but my love, which I had given to nobody. And now they were dead. Both of them… ---- My eyes fluttered open and I took in my surroundings. I was in a room with bamboo walls, floors, and ceiling. I was laying on what felt like a soft bed, and around me there were tables with medicines scattered about. A window was opened, and fresh spring air was coming into the room. I looked up and remembered that Po and Andrew were dead. But was that a dream? Or was it real? I, determined to find out the truth, stepped out of the hospital bed to find myself in a blue hospital gown, not like the kind they use in the human world. I walked to the door and was about to open it when it was opened by Trinity and Nicole. "Guys," I said in a tired voice as they engulfed me in a hug. "What happened to you?" Trinity asked. "Are you okay?" "I'm fine," I snapped at her. "Where's Po and Andrew?" They ignored me. "Sit down, I want to tell you what happened," Nicole said, leading me to my bed. I shook my head. "Where's Po and Andrew?" I demanded. "Kelsi, calm down, why do you want to see them?" Nicole asked. I answered her by pushing my friends aside and running down the hospital hallway. "Kelsi!" they cried after me. I ignored them and kept running. ---- I eventually heard a familiar voice speaking, and another familiar voice responding. I gasped, eyes filling with tears, smiling, and I flung open the nearest door. What I saw made me cry harder, out of two emotions- happiness and sadness. I recognized Po, leaning over a hospital bed, smiling over the mess of a bird in the bed. The two looked up to look at me. I gasped when I saw him- Mr. Ping. Or at least, I think it was him. He looked totally unrecognizable. His feathers were all burned off, revealing his pink skin underneath. His eyes weren't full of the energy that I had seen before, but that energy was replaced with exhaustion. He smiled when he saw me, but it wasn't a happy smile, it was an exhausted, hurt smile. I burst into tears immediately, then ran up and hugged Po. "Kelsi?" he asked. "You okay?" "You're alive," I bawled. "You're both alive. I thought that you both…" I didn't finished, but cried away. "Thank goodness that the doctor hadn't fled the valley just then," Mr. Ping said, in an exhausted, cracking voice. I nodded, continuing to cry. ---- The two filled me in on what happened- when I ran off to get the doctor, Po saw him running from the valley and called him in to help. The five, Shifu, and Trinity and Nicole came back saying that the monsters were defeated. So Trinity and Nicole went off to find me. When they didn't come back, all the other masters came to find us, reached us in Mr. Nepolotano's lair, and found Trinity and Nicole fighting their science teacher and an unconscious me on the floor. I had been given a potion that would knock me out for a good five days, which they found out later. They battled, and Mr. Nepolotano forfeited after about fifteen minutes. Trinity and Nicole made him resign as science teacher, and he was sent to Chor Gom prison, where he will remain for life. Mr. Ping was healed very quickly, he would be able to leave the hospital in a week. After hearing the story, my face turned bright red instead of a smile forming on my face. I hated them. I hated the evil in both worlds. Why couldn't all the evil just… disappear? A lot of other people were wondering that, but they had other people to make the evil go away. Like the people in the valley. They have the warriors of the Jade Palace to make the evil go away. But they don't know that we can't just snap our fingers and rid the worlds of evil. They don't know that even I, the leader of the Dragon Sisters, beg for someone to rid the world of evil. That's my job, to fight off evil, but even I cannot do that. I can prevent evil from attacking the valley, but I cannot rid the worlds of evil. I sighed, looking into the green eyes of the Dragon Warrior. With the power of a warrior comes great responsibility. We must keep the worlds safe, even if we cannot keep them safe forever. And what we warriors have learned from this experience is that we must destroy an evil force before it reaches the valley, or else this will happen, and maybe worse. I don't know about anyone else, but I think that if anyone dies or is hurt because of evil, the warriors of the Jade Palace will be blamed. I can't blame them for blaming us- it's our duty to protect the valley. And that's why we must protect the valley until death. Or for us Dragon Sisters, until we either die or decide to live in the human world. ---- We left the hospital the next day and arrived at the palace. I immediately ran off to the Peach Tree of Heavenly Wisdom and sat down to mediate. I needed to calm down after this tragic chain of events. "Grandma Sylvia," I whispered as I tried to calm down underneath the peach tree. "I hope you're proud of me. I wish you were still alive so that you could… guide me. Even if you didn't know of the animal world, you could still guide me. I miss you. I hope you're enjoying that fake rose I gave you." There was silence for a moment as I looked up at the sun, in the middle of the sky, looking down on me as if it were guarding me. Then, I closed my eyes and heard a female voice say, "I love it, Kelsi dear, but I cannot keep this beautiful gift. Here." I almost screamed as I opened my eyes and looked around. I saw nobody. I realized that I had been alone. But who had said that? Was it… no, it couldn't be. Grandma Sylvia had been dead for years. But who else would call me 'Kelsi dear'?… ---- "Do-do-do-do. Do-do-do-do. Do-do-do-do. Do-do-do-do. Do-do-do-do. Do-do-do-do-do-do. Do-do-do-do. Do-do-do-do." Trinity looked up from her raspberry ice. "Um… Glad You Came by The Wanted?" "Ding ding ding!" I said. "A point for Trinity. Lance, how many points is that?" Lance marked something on a piece of paper in a notebook and looked up. "Seven to two, Trinity." "Beat that, sister!" Trinity said to Nicole. "That's not fair!" Nicole exclaimed, almost knocking her vanilla ice cream to the floor. "Trinity knows all these songs, and I don't! Can you sing something that I know?" "Sorry, Nicole, rules are rules," I said. "I sing the beats of the refrain of a song, and whoever raises their hand first gets to answer. If they get it correct, they gain a point. If they get it wrong, they lose a point. Those are the rules of 'Guess the Beats'." "I hate this game," said Nicole as she slumped down in the bench. I shook my head as Lance threw out his empty styrofoam container that read, 'Milling's Italian Ices: Italian Ices, Smoothies, Ice Cream, and much more!'. "You're such a fail, Nicole," laughed Lance's best friend, Matt Pang. He licked his chocolate ice cream as it dripped over his hand. I handed him a napkin and he wiped his hand. I dug into my little black pure and pulled out a ten dollar bill. "Okay, I've decided what I want. Be back in a second," I told my friends as I stood up and got off the bench, walking to the front of the Italian ice shop. It had taken a while of convincing to let Mrs. Bacon go with Lance, Matt, and I to 'Milling's Italian Ices'. Our parents had finally allowed us to go alone (it was only down a couple blocks), and now we were sitting on the bench near it, eating our treats. I ordered a root beer float and walked back to my friends (well, friends and Lance and Matt). Lance and Matt started talking to each other, so the girls and I talked by ourselves. "Well, Mr. Nepolotano's gone," Trinity said. "Who do you think's going to teach us?" "Who cares?" I asked. "All that matters is that he's gone. But why do you think he had the book and floating gem?" They shrugged. "Who knows?" Nicole asked. "Maybe he's taking orders from a higher power, and that's the way they communicate." "Or he just likes gems a lot," Trinity suggested. We glared at her. "It's possible," she added. "Well, now we know to never let evil reach the valley ever again," I said. "We have to defeat evil before it reaches the valley. That way we won't endanger the valley residents." "But it's not our fault for endangering them," said Nicole. "It's the fault of the cruel evil beings who thought to attack the valley in the first place." We nodded, continuing to eat our delicious treats. Lance and Matt stopped talking to each other. "Want to continue the game?" Lance asked. I nodded. "Okay, next song: Do-do-do-do-DO-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do," I started singing… ---- Evil cannot really be defeated. It can just be prevented for a bit. Then it will rise again. I will never believe that evil can actually disappear for good. The best thing that we warriors can do is prevent it from hurting others. But even though everyone expects us to, we cannot really destroy evil forever. There will always be evil out there, whether it's an idiotic teenager in the human world or a crocodile bandit in the animal world. Being a warrior has taught me that a warrior's purpose is not to make all evil disappear, although it seems that way. It is to defeat evil forces one by one, but we cannot defeat all evil. Evil will continue to rise all over the worlds, and we cannot defeat all of it. We can only defeat the evil around us. And even if we don't defeat all evil, defeating a small group of evil bandits, or even one criminal, brings us joy that we did something good, that we helped the worlds to become a better place. As I said before, we can never defeat all evil and 'make world peace' (which, by the way, will never be achieved). We can defeat a few villains and make the worlds a slightly better place. And until I die or chose to live in the human world, I will continue to make the world a better place, no matter what the cost. END OF BOOK 3